For a place that depends on logic and reason, the
Lab's layout is anything but. In fact, a running joke

at JPL is that its employees need to use GPS to find
their way around the Lab. For one, buildings have
numbers instead of names. Secondly, buildings are
ordered in the number in which they were funded,
instead of by location. For example, Building 67 is
perplexingly located between Buildings 238 and 138.

Intrigued by this dichotomy and wanting to know
more about JPL aside from the four walls of my
cubicle, I came up with a plan. Armed with a GPS
tracking device, camera, and a trusty pair of shoes, I walked to every building on Lab in numerical
order. What I thought would take a Saturday
afternoon took 22 hours over the span of four
days at a walking distance of 52.2 miles.

The resulting map is a reflection of this wacky
experiment, research at the Lab's Beacon Library,
and conversations with other JPL employees. The
map itself is divided into two sections. The front
is an Insider's Guide to JPL, containing information I wish someone had explained to me when I began
working at the Lab.

The back provides several Walking Tours. In the same
way that JPL encourages space exploration, these
tours encourage Lab exploration. Whether visiting
the world's most stable clock, the weavers who
hand-stitch the thermal blankets for every mission,
or simply finding a new place to have lunch, this ma
offers a fresh perspective on the overlooked aspects
of the Lab's culture that make it so unique.

The map is not meant to be an authoritative guide,
but rather a conversation starter, a poster, or simply
a celebration of the mysterious and curious place
known as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.